How are schools using the news feature?

@Becky Wilson We use the news module for resources specific to admissions and enrollment. We have the following categories:

Included in each of those is a landing page that is in most cases linked from somewhere else. For the birth certificate and records request, it's linked from the checklist ("click here for more information"). For the interview information, the “we look forward to meeting you” page is linked from the interview confirmation email, and is just a landing page where parents click to view their student's grade level, since the information is slightly different for each one.

We hand out a QR code sheet at the end of each interview that scans to the “thank you for joining us” page, and again, parents click the appropriate grade level.

That's the basic framework; each page is a little different, but they all pretty much do the same thing. One thing I will caution you is that I can only get them to work as secure pages restricted by role; if I set them as public, it doesn't provide a sharable URL. In most cases this doesn't matter, because everyone who would need to access the information has a BBID already anyway, so as long as you set up the roles correctly they'll be able to view it. If there's anything that should be publicly visible, though, that can be a bit of an issue.

Happy to set up a call if you'd like to go through this in some more detail! Email me if so: brian.leblanc@thalesacademy dot org.

@Brian LeBlanc This is great and definitely something we need to do in our office. It doesn't look like I currently have access to “News” even though I'm a platform manager so I'm guessing I will need to get our IT people to adjust my settings.

We have been waiting around to see if Blackbaud would make it so that we could create a resource board for our candidates and parents during the application process but this may work instead.